Monday, January 12, 2004

Finally, an understanding of why I seem to not be moving forward on my new sf novel. It came to me suddenly while I was thinking about something else entirely.

I have messed up a chronology and an event. I cannot have the people meet with an alien group at this point because it is far later in the time line that the first aliens are encountered.

Having realized that is a relief. It gives me three options: Change the nature of the people they meet, change the date (and therefore a lot of background material and circumstances) when they meet, or take the story entirely out of my IWC universe. At this point any one of those options is viable. They all three mean some serious reworking of the few thousand words I already have as well as the outline... but I am now able to look at the entire work and know why I couldn't move forward on it.

This is a relief. It was an odd way to start the year, to find the novel I'd been planning on for months had started to limp ahead by a few hundred words at a time. It's a good thing the new additional material to Muse filled the gap in my meager word counts. It's also a good thing that I decided to drop that word count down for this year.

I am tending toward changing the nature of the people they encounter, and that's not only because it would be the easiest change. I have set up in my universe a number of wildcard human groups. I've used them... twice before, I think, with a reference to the third. I believe I had ten ships of these people go out to different areas. (Need to go back and look at my notes again.) I could use one of those ships to explain these people... and, in fact... hell, I like it better than the alien question because it fills in one more serious problem I thought I would find an answer to when I got to it.

Huh. This works. I need to find my timeline, my notes on the lost ships, and work this one in.

You know, I suddenly want to work on Farstep Station again now. (grin)

Currently working on:

Pages

Beware the Wrath of Bunny Hopper

Bunny always knew her family was odd, but she never realized how strange until she found herself joining her brothers in an ageless war against magic she never knew existed.

Resurrection: Chance and Change

When the captain's gambling finally caught up with him, two crewmembers, an enigmatic passenger and a local Port Rat on the run from trouble come up with a daring plan that may save them all . . . or kill them. How desperate are they?